Topic: Commodities

Earlier this month, I asked the leaders of a group of U.S-based companies what – if anything – they were doing to prepare for “Grexit”, or a possible exit of Greece from the euro zone. The responses from the manufacturers were rather vague. The FT reports.

Gold tracked the euro lower on Friday en route to its weakest monthly performance since December, pushed down by fears the debt crisis in Europe could spiral out of control and trigger a global economic slowdown.

Some of Europe’s biggest fund managers have confirmed they are dumping euro assets amid rising fears over a possible Greek exit from the eurozone and single currency turmoil, the Financial Times reports.

Rio Tinto, the world's No.2 producer of iron ore, sees no signs of a slowdown in demand from top consumer China and still plans to almost double its output of the steel-making ingredient by 2016.

This Memorial Day weekend, motorists will find gasoline plentiful and at the lowest price it’s been for two years. Good news. And it may get better. The Christian Science Monitor reports.

Market correlations have once again been rising - with stocks, bonds and even gold dropping in recent weeks on worries about Greece. That's making it harder for investors to use traditional forms of portfolio diversification. Instead, according to one fund manager, investors should be looking at technical price patterns.

The takeover battle for Cove Energy looks set to run after Thailand's PTT Exploration and Production trumped Royal Dutch Shell with a $1.9 billion offer, underscoring interest in new east African gas finds.

Gold rose on Thursday, snapping three days of losses to climb towards $1,578 an ounce, as the dollar swung back into negative territory versus the euro after a softer-than-expected U.S. manufacturing report.

US manufacturers have attacked plans by JPMorgan Chase to launch an exchange-traded fund backed by physical copper, arguing that the product would “grossly and artificially inflate prices” and “wreak havoc on the US and global economy”. The FT reports.

When Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September 2008, investors rushed to buy gold. When the eurozone crisis erupted in 2010, they bought more.' But this year the buying has fizzled out, reports the Financial Times.

I sympathize with the Germans. This is not because I agree with their prevailing view of how the crisis occurred or what to do about it. I sympathize because the German elite were the ones who understood what creating the euro implied. They realized that a currency union could not work without a political union. The FT reports.

Gold managed to recover most of the ground it lost in a brutal sell-off earlier on Wednesday even as sentiment and the euro remained fragile as European leaders met to discuss the deepening euro-zone debt crisis.

Singapore has enticed Trafigura, one of the world’s biggest commodities trading houses, to move its legal headquarters from Switzerland to the Asian city state, highlighting the attractions of its low-tax regime and proximity to China. The FT reports.

Your social security benefits are tax free but other income is not.  Should retirees have to pay taxes on that income?

Gold fell on Tuesday under the weight of a weaker euro, as investors bet against a meeting of European leaders this week doing much to tackle the region's debt crisis.